default materials in building

[itzwaflez]

I would like if every planet would have their own default building material. What i mean is when you build a liquid pump from cobalt in the swampy asteroid it would not change the default building material in other asteroids from for example copper to cobalt. it would be very nice in my opinion :D.

[AndreyKl]

Agree, it's very annoying when I have to constantly make sure tiles and wires are made from right materials.

In one case tiles run out of sandstone (because planetoid had 0 sandstone, but I was building on bigger planetoid using sandstone) and auto-switched to limited supply of granite which I was keeping for décor buildings. I had to rebuild the tiles later to reclaim granite. In another case wires switched to iron that was meant for steel production.

Either planetoids should have individual settings or buildings should not switch automatically. That switching is more harmful than useful.

[yoakenashi]

Another solution that could even help within a large asteroid would be the addition of a “What’s nearby” button to the materials bar.

Currently we see materials available from the entire asteroid, including that little bit we brought over from the main asteroid and we don’t want to use, but it keeps selecting it anyways because we just used it on the main asteroid. BUT, this button would simply show you the available materials within the camera’s current view.

In a biome with lots of granite, but already mined most of it out and don’t remember the biome? Just click “What’s nearby” and you’ll see the count of granite stay high and those counts of sandstone half an asteroid away go to zero.

This would also be handy with sets of storage containers on screen. I can can click the “What’s nearby” and get a quick count of all buildable materials in all my storage bins.

The nice thing about having a button for this is that it makes the request on-demand, so the game won’t need to do a search all the time.

And since typically you want to build with what’s nearby, you could have that highest count be automatically selected.

I already use the copy tool extensively as I assume I already built things with local and common resources, but that’s not always the case. And I find it tedious to hover over the debris on the ground and try to see what’s available.

[pether]

7 hours ago, yoakenashi said:

Another solution that could even help within a large asteroid would be the addition of a “What’s nearby” button to the materials bar.

That would be the best one. In 90% of the cases I don't care what will be used to build the thing, I just want to have it done.

[Yobbo]

On 8/20/2021 at 7:07 AM, pether said:

That would be the best one. In 90% of the cases I don't care what will be used to build the thing, I just want to have it done.

I am the absolute opposite of this. I become unbelievably anal about what material is used for literally everything i build .

My choices however, almost always remain the same per-building-type, per-planetoid.

[pether]

14 hours ago, Yobbo said:

I am the absolute opposite of this. I become unbelievably anal about what material is used for literally everything i build .

My choices however, almost always remain the same per-building-type, per-planetoid.

I'm not telling to remove all of the material options and leave just "the colsest one", I would just wish there was just another option for people who don't care. There is no need to opose that, you would lose nothing

[Yobbo]

8 hours ago, pether said:

I'm not telling to remove all of the material options and leave just "the colsest one", I would just wish there was just another option for people who don't care. There is no need to opose that, you would lose nothing

Of course!

I also think an additional "nearby" or "anything" option would be great.

Honestly my ideal would be something like:

1. default to "anything" as a material
2. order the list of materials by local abundance somehow
3. remember material selection choice per-building per-planetoid

I just commented to make it clear that 1 and 2 wouldn't solve my personal material selection tedium at all, while 3 would . I think they're all in line with what the OP is indicating.

[pether]

100% agree with that proposal!